TERRE HAUTE — Before a rapt audience in the Terre Haute North Vigo High School gym, Barack Obama made a statement that carries added significance now, 22 months later.
�The American people are not looking for a way to bring each other down, but to find a way to lift this country up,� he said on April 11, 2008.
Obama was a Democratic presidential candidate then, locked in a tight race with fellow U.S. senator Hillary Clinton for the nomination. People in the crowd of 2,700 heard about health care, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the snowballing recession, spiraling college tuition, and the home mortgage crisis. They cheered. That November, of course, he won the presidency, and took office in January 2009.
Barely a year into his term, now, those problems have not vanished. Such a rapid, multi-pronged cure would�ve been miraculous.
But this is the 21st century. Repairs, even to something as monolithic and unfathomably complex as the U.S. economy, must happen with speed equal to that of the Internet.
A handful of presidents have inherited similar societal hairballs. Obviously, Abraham Lincoln (with the Civil War) and Franklin Roosevelt (the Great Depression) stepped into crises, as well as William McKinley, with the Panic of 1896, said James Hilty, dean of Temple University Ambler and a nationally published presidential scholar. Lincoln�s task was incomparable. As for FDR and McKinley, time was less of an enemy, and fewer members of Congress were fighting their efforts, compared to Obama�s situation.
�It�s a very different environment today,� said Hilty, who has published works on Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton and George W. Bush, along with the 1998 book �Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector.�
�I�ll blame the 24-hour news cycles,� Hilty said by telephone Thursday from Ambler, Pa. �But I also blame the basic immaturity of the country. We want something, and we want it right now. And the people who have the most outlandish things to say get the most attention.�
Unfortunately for Obama, some members of Congress seem determined to prevent anything significant from happening right now � or at least not until November�s midterm congressional elections. That�s not surprising, but sad.
Unemployment, for example, is the stinging, lingering after-effect of recession. Ten percent of Americans in the work force don�t have jobs. The rate will stay in double-digits throughout 2010, the president�s Council of Economic Advisors reported to Congress on Thursday. Yet, that same day, a bipartisan agreement on a job-creation bill unraveled on Capitol Hill. Republicans, who pushed for peripheral attachments such as an extension of the Patriot Act and a continuation of Medicare payments to doctors, reacted angrily. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid�s scrapped the two-party deal on an $85-billion plan � endorsed by Obama � in favor of a Democrat-style $15-billion package.
That is just one example of how slowly progress moves through the congressional sausage grinder, especially when the lawmakers fear their jobs are in jeopardy. Health-care reform, energy initiatives and education policies will not happen quickly.
And, the economy will not recover quickly. Our culture � the have-it-now mentality � created that mess over many years. Too many people bought stuff they couldn�t realistically afford on credit � both at home and in their businesses � falsely ballooning the values of financial investments and homes. Restoring legitimacy to the American system of producing and consuming goods and services will take years. As Obama took office, the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs a month � 800,000. That�s about the equivalent of every man, woman and child living in Dayton, Ohio � every month.
Did the nation expect Obama to push those boulders � a divisive Congress, and a mass-scale economic hangover � up and over the hill in a year? Apparently. And he shares responsibility, partly, for those impossibly great expectations. Despite his sincerity to reach across the political aisle and public support (his approval rating remains a steady 51 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll), the president�s persuasive appeal has not won over members of Congress. The lawmakers, feeling heat back home, aren�t budging in any direction that could cost them re-election. Republicans have solidified their opposition.
�It appears they just don�t want to do anything that gives [the president] credit,� Hilty said.
Roosevelt worked in a far different climate in his first term. In the midterm election of 1934, voters gave FDR, a Democrat, a huge majority in the U.S. House and Senate, Hilty explained. Likewise, the grand social reforms enacted in the mid-1960s largely happened because of President Lyndon Johnson�s ability to wheel and deal in Congress, where he�d spent 24 years as a representative and senator.
�Presidents, the smart ones, know that you can�t manage [Congress]; you can only manipulate it,� Hilty said. �And that was Lyndon Johnson�s greatest strength, and Obama�s biggest weakness,� so far.
FDR also excelled in an area Obama has yet to secure � connecting to the heartland. It�s an odd paradox, because Roosevelt came from aristocracy, and Obama from a far less privileged life. Still, FDR�s �fireside chats,� broadcast by radio across the country, drew 400,000 letters a week at peak points during the Depression, Hilty noted.
With that momentum � in Congress, and in middle America � Roosevelt�s agenda for revitalizing the devastated economy got implemented. �The stuff they did makes the current stimulus program look like child�s play,� Hilty said.
Obama needs a more effective liaison on Capitol Hill, and to more clearly explain the huge task of economic recovery to the masses. It�s a tall order.
Saddled with a �do-nothing Congress� in his first term, President Truman simply stiffened his upper lip and plowed ahead, realizing his opposition was emboldened by his slipping approval ratings. Risking his re-election hopes, Truman forged ahead in the country�s best interests, as he saw it, Hilty recalled.
Obama may have to follow those footsteps.
�He might just do what he has to do, and the hell with it,� Hilty said. �There are very few presidents who would do that, and Harry Truman was one of them.�
Of course, much to the surprise of pundits, Americans wound up backing Truman in the 1948 presidential election.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
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